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Monday, August 7, 2017

Something New

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“TESS” by Kirsten McDougall
(Victoria University Press, $NZ25)

Sometimes,
reviewing newly-published novels is like entering a boxing ring with one arm
tied behind your back. The impact of a novel is its total impact – how it reads from beginning to end. But with
newly-published novels, there is a well-established (and perfectly justifiable)
convention that reviewers should not give away essential developments of the
plot which the author means to come as a surprise to readers. Tess has such developments. They colour
the way I read this brisk and short (c.150 pages) novel, but I will stick to
the convention. Of which more later.

Nearly
five years ago on this blog, I had the great pleasure of reviewing
Wellington-based writer Kirsten McDougall’s first novel The Invisible Rider, with its interesting mixture of dream, reverie
and hope as it gave, in vignettes, the life of a decent suburban chap. Now
comes her second novel, Tess, but it
is a very different production. I would not go so far as the blurb, which calls
it a “gothic love story” but, with its tragic backstories and its scenes of
extreme emotion, it tends somewhere in that direction.

On
a rainy and miserable day, Lewis, a 45-year-old dentist with a small-town
(Masterton) practice, picks up a hitchhiker, a taciturn 19-year-old woman who
takes a long time to say much and to give her name as Tess. She is obviously running
away from something, but she will not say what. After helping her escape the
unwelcome attentions of a bunch of local yobbos, Lewis takes Tess back to his
own home, and they set about sharing the same house.

We
soon discover that Lewis is a man going through a complex sort of grieving. His
wife apparently died in some sort of accident; his old mother is Altzheimic and
doesn’t recognise him when he visits her in the nursing home; and for reasons
that take a long time to emerge, he is alienated from his daughter Jean, who
has run away. As for Tess, it’s clear she had a troubled childhood and was
brought up by her eccentric grandmother Sheila after her mother abandoned her.
It’s something more recent that has set her on the run, apparently to do with
an abusive relationship, but that is made clear too late in the novel for me to
reveal it here.

Kirsten
McDougall’s skill in the first half of the novel is the subtle way she
dramatises the tension between these two lost souls. Lewis is not a sexual
predator and has not picked up a young hitchhiker to exploit her. He genuinely
wants to help, but he is also lonely and needs the company. Occasionally he
feels sentimental about the young woman, and once he almost crosses a line, but
he draws himself back with the thought that she’s about the same age as his
absent daughter. Tess is quite capable of looking after herself, but is aware
of this sexually-charged tension. It is the tension of a middle-aged man and a
younger woman sharing the same space without really cohabiting.

Then
Lewis’s daughter Jean comes back – a bitter, abusive and angry young woman –
and the whole shape of the novel changes.

The
backstories of both Tess and Lewis are revealed in flashbacks. Another skill of
McDougall’s is capturing the child’s-eye-view of the world when Tess was living
with her grandmother. Take, for example, this precise and detailed description
of the way the child Tess reacts to a horse:

“The horse came closer and her mother held
the apple on a flat palm, offering it. Tess watched the horse turn its head to
the side and open its big horse lips to show its teeth, which looked like old
man’s fingernails, large and yellowed. The horse wrapped its meaty tongue
around the apple and pulled it into its mouth in one piece. It crunched down
and small pieces of apple iced with long threads of saliva fell from its mouth
as it chewed. Her mother ran her hand over the long bone of is nose. It seemed
to Tess that its face was mainly made up of its nose. Rose [Tess’s mother] asked Tess if she wanted to do the same.
Tess looked at the horse’s eyes, large and shiny globes, andthought she did
want to touch it, but then it spluttered from its nostrils and shook its head
and Tess said no.” (p.28)

The
mixed fascination and fear of a child is captured perfectly here.

At
about the midway point, however, there are two surprises, both of which I’m
bound to leave vague for the reason I’ve already given. One has to do with
paranormal powers. The other has to do with the sexual relationship of two
characters. The paranormal powers really does take us into “gothic” territory –
or at least some distance from the realism we thought we were appreciating. The
sexual relationship develops credibly enough, but is sprung upon us so suddenly,
and without any real build-up, that it comes close to shock value. And, in both
flashbacks and in the linear present, much violence enters the story. In fact,
the past complications of both Tess and Lewis are laid on in extreme form.

Finishing
Tess, I felt like a tired rugby commentator,
waiting to say it’s “a novel of two halves”. Of McDougall’s clear and precise
prose style there is no doubt. She can create a vivid scene and make us aware
of how characters are feeling by their actions and way of speaking. But the
transition from one sort of tale to another does not quite work. In the end,
as she wanders off, Tess has become more of a redemptive fantasy figure than
the real young woman she began as.

Other
readers may be able to reconcile the two halves more easily than I can.